So, I done bought me a new laptop. It’ll be a bit of a struggle to afford, but I do need a new one; my beloved old Sony C1XD has served me well for the last five years but it’s really just too slow to use seriously any more. I considered upgrading the RAM and hard disk on it and getting a new battery, but by the time I do that, I may as well get a new system. The new laptop will actually be faster than my current desktop, so I’ll use it as my main system, give this desktop to my partner, and use his old desktop as a dedicated server. My old laptop is now for sale; it’s a fantastic system, I still love the form factor and the build quality, just a bit too slow to use as a main system or even a main laptop any more. I know there’s a lot of Picturebook enthusiasts out there, though, so I should get a decent price for it.

I didn’t want to buy used. And even if I did, comparing the price of a *new* Lenovo to a *used* Apple is not fair. Why not compare the price of a *used* Lenovo and a *used* Apple? 🙂

I did actually consider getting a Macbook for a while. The price difference new is about $400 in Canada. They are nice machines, but I rather wanted the 12.1″ form factor over the 13.3″, and Mandriva doesn’t support the new-fangled EFI boot system yet, so far as I know. In the end the price gap plus all of that led me to plump for the Lenovo. There’s also the fact that it should be supported almost entirely by open source drivers (I’m just worried about the wireless, might need proprietary firmware for that), which is nice – it has an AIGLX-capable Intel graphics chipset.

For some reason I thought you got a used Lenovo. At the time I bought my Macbook I compared it with “PC” laptops of equal level and found it was about the same price. Plus, I’ve always wanted one 😀

As far as EFI, you actually don’t have to have an EFI capable Linux. You just use a program called refit that detects the Linux distribution at boot up, and install LILO on the root partition of the OS (not on the boot of the HD) – and boom, it boots! Although, you do have to keep OS X installed. The driver for the wireless is madwifi, which isn’t totally open source because it uses a binary HAL to interface with the device.

Personally, I don’t actually use Linux on my Macbook most of the time. I just installed it for fun and games, but OS X is a good OS and in some cases beats Linux. Plus, you still have the terminal 😀